YES, INDIVIDUALS REALLY CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE WHEN IT COMES TO COMBATING CLIMATE CHANGE
This blog is founded on the idea that you, and I, and all the other people with whom we share this planet, can do many things to reduce our impact on the planet. And there is perhaps no environmental issue that more urgently needs our attention and action than climate change.
In the last year, we have received even more dire predictions from the IPCC, the UN body that assesses the science related to climate change: unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C (the amount needed to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change) will be beyond reach.
This problem requires a huge reduction in our collective carbon footprint, and will require all hands on deck to make it happen.
That is why I am completely baffled by attempts by reasonable, informed people (including one recently in the Washington Post), to convince the public that individuals don’t have a role when it comes to combatting climate change.
I’ve seen two related arguments for letting individual consumers off the hook when it comes to reducing our collective carbon footprint. First, as argued in the recent Washington Post opinion, the climate change problem has gotten so bad, that “the time for acting locally has passed” and only large-scale action by government can save us now.
A second, similar argument questions whether individuals can do anything to slow climate change, given that 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions can be traced back to 100 companies (mostly fossil fuel companies).
The answer is a resounding yes. These 100 companies are responsible for so many emissions because they are producing all the fossil fuels we use.
We are the ones who are actually burning the fossil fuels these companies provide, through our everyday activities and lifestyle choices.
Yes, fossil fuel companies have an important role to play in stopping climate change. They need to reduce their own emissions. They need to extract and bring our natural resources to market responsibly and with the climate in mind. Most importantly, they need to pursue alternative energy sources.
Similarly, to the first argument, Government must also do significant work to transform the energy market and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels by investing in alternative energy sources. As WaPo justifiably points out, the climate crisis cannot be solved without it.
But we must also take responsibility, as the end users—the 8 billion carbon burners—to make the lifestyle adjustments needed to reduce our carbon footprints. We need to reduce our transportation-related emissions by driving and flying less. We need to buy less stuff. We need to heat, cool and power our homes more efficiently.
Those who say we’re powerless appear to assume that individual actions can’t slow down climate change since they haven’t done it yet. WaPo makes this argument explicitly. The problem with the argument, of course, is that we haven’t done close to all we can to combat climate change. Most people haven’t done a single thing. And it’s not entirely our fault.
The public has not been sufficiently educated about the dire state of affairs. We fashion climate change as an “environmental” crisis instead of an existential crisis. It is only when the public truly understands that climate change threatens our survival, and that we must reduce our carbon footprint to have any hope of slowing it, that change will happen.
Which is why it is so foolish, and dangerous, to tell the public that we are powerless– that we can sit back and wait for government, or companies, to fix this problem for us.
We have so much power in the fight against climate change. It’s time to start using it.